Dear Editor,
We only seem to get worked up when police brutality reaches outside its usual confines of the poor black boy from some obscure inner-city community. That is my problem with the whole Mario Deane affair. It is the reason I was apprehensive and questioned the whole thing.
Police kill people in and out of lock-ups very often in this country, but many of us tend to write off most of these boys because we surmise that they probably deserved it anyway.
I'm not saying that there should not be outrage over Mario Deane's killing. I'm saying the Mario Deane uproar reeks of hypocrisy. If Mario Dean was from the inner city we don't even know. All we know is what he looked like and that he had a job. The media got us good this time. Our true colours are showing.
Earlier this year it was reported by a couple of media houses that "Oshane Dothlyn, 20, died in February while in custody at the Darling Street Police Station where he was being held on ganja possession charges. He was found dead in his cell on February 2, a day after he was taken into custody by the police." Yet the public never really made anything of it. They assumed that Oshane was probably a dark-skinned, troublemaker from the inner city and not brown and employed like Mario Deane.
We huff, puff and hold our chins high when we hear about racial police killings in the United States, as if we are any better. We are exactly the same, maybe even worse, because we actually tacitly justify it.
Anna-Lisa Walcott
Kingston 6
Ja's hypocrisy in Mario Deane case
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We only seem to get worked up when police brutality reaches outside its usual confines of the poor black boy from some obscure inner-city community. That is my problem with the whole Mario Deane affair. It is the reason I was apprehensive and questioned the whole thing.
Police kill people in and out of lock-ups very often in this country, but many of us tend to write off most of these boys because we surmise that they probably deserved it anyway.
I'm not saying that there should not be outrage over Mario Deane's killing. I'm saying the Mario Deane uproar reeks of hypocrisy. If Mario Dean was from the inner city we don't even know. All we know is what he looked like and that he had a job. The media got us good this time. Our true colours are showing.
Earlier this year it was reported by a couple of media houses that "Oshane Dothlyn, 20, died in February while in custody at the Darling Street Police Station where he was being held on ganja possession charges. He was found dead in his cell on February 2, a day after he was taken into custody by the police." Yet the public never really made anything of it. They assumed that Oshane was probably a dark-skinned, troublemaker from the inner city and not brown and employed like Mario Deane.
We huff, puff and hold our chins high when we hear about racial police killings in the United States, as if we are any better. We are exactly the same, maybe even worse, because we actually tacitly justify it.
Anna-Lisa Walcott
Kingston 6
Ja's hypocrisy in Mario Deane case
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